Saturday, December 28, 2013

Watch this video and then take your best stab at what religious tradition these guys hail from:

Yep, that's their idea of shaking things up. Still unsure? A few hints: They are less likely to see the US as "structurally unjust" than other Americans are, they express high levels of contentment with the communities they live in; their younger members are actually more politically conservative than their older members are; they are more likely than members of any other (ir)religious tradition in the US to express support for a smaller government providing fewer services and opposition to a larger government providing more services; they find abortion, drinking, and sex outside of marriage all more off-putting than members of any other (ir)religious tradition do; their reproductive tendencies are uniquely eugenic; and when their tradition is singled out for mockery, rather than issuing death threats in response, they playfully use the derision as an impetus for others to gain a deeper understanding of their worldview.

And their somewhat overlapping allies, the puerile, immodest LGBTXQRBUGGERYJIMOAIDSRYWers:

Since members of the West's greatest last hope won't unsheathe their swords and go for the jugulars of modernity's degenerates, allow this willing assassin from the ranks of the darkly enlightened to do so in their stead. First, borrowing from the inestimable Phyllis Schlafly:

Sunday, December 22, 2013

The GSS is a gift that keeps on giving. I was unaware of a series of questions the survey put to respondents in 1990 and again in 2000 about the perceived proneness to violence among members of different racial groups. Inexcusable on my part, really, as that sort of thing is this blog's bread and butter. Better late than never, though. For contemporary relevance and because of the finer racial distinctions among participants that are possible in the data from 2000-onward than from before the turn of the millennium, the following comes from the later results.

Despite the Cathedral's intentional obfuscation of disparities in violence and criminality--and, when it's adherents think they can get away with it, blatant inversion of reality--people still tend to believe their own lying eyes rather than their mendacious overlords. The following graph shows the perceived proneness to violence by members of the four conventionally major 'racial' groupings in the US. The higher the score, the more violent the group is perceived to be*:

Although in a few short decades it will cease to be the case, non-Hispanic whites still form a majority in the US. Surely it is the oppressive majority's anti-NAM and pro-yellow biases that are skewing overall perceptions of racial differences in propensities for violence! Well, let's take a look.

Bear with me, the following graph is a bit difficult to comprehend at first blush. The racial categories along the x-axis (the horizontal line along the bottom) depict groups of survey respondents while the colored bars that run parallel to the y-axis (vertical line) illustrate how each category of survey respondents perceive each racial group's tendencies towards violence. So the first cluster shows how whites view each of the four groups, the second cluster shows how blacks view each of the groups, etc:

It's not only whites who correctly perceive the associations between race and violence. Hispanics and Asians do as well. Blacks present the only stark contrast with reality, perceiving whites and blacks to be (essentially) equally violent, with Hispanics and Asians less so. Grievance peddling race hustlers and their allies in the Media are relentless in their attempts to recast reality in such a way that it actually becomes blacks who need to be weary of whites rather than the other way around, and their efforts appear to be most successful among blacks, many of whom are more than happy to blame whitey for their problems.

What about SWPLs? Don't they see blacks with rose-colored tints and whites, uh, a little more darkly? Than conservative whites, yes, but reality even shakes this more pious contingent's faith in the Narrative. The following graph compares and contrasts the perceptions of liberal and conservative whites:

Less racial variance detected by leftists than by conservatives, but the general pattern is accurate perceived by both. While some credit is due, there is (faux^) ethnomasochism evident among white leftists worth remarking upon as well. Compared to their conservative co-racialists, liberal whites see blacks, Hispanics, and Asians as relatively pacific. When it comes to whites, however, liberals shelve some of their belief in the goodness of mankind and judge whites more harshly than conservatives do. Conservative whites, on the other hand, should come in for a bit of criticism for perhaps being too forgiving when it comes to whites vis-a-vis Asians.

** To facilitate viewing, I've inverted the GSS' scale, for which higher numbers illustrate less proneness to violence.

^ The qualifier here serving as a note that SWPLs are probably mostly thinking of the wrong kind of whites rather than of themselves when passing judgment on the violent tendencies of whites in general. They voted for Barack Obama and all that.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

It was only a matter of time before those arguing that expanding the definition of marriage to include members of the same sex would merely be the first of many assaults on the institution's integrity rather than a one-time update would be proven correct. Despite the shrill cries of harpies and their eunuch hangers-on that such a faux argument was nothing more than a thin veil disguising the blatant homophobia of those holding traditional retrograde values, a district judge in Utah has struck down the state's law forbidding polygamy on exactly those grounds:

In a game-changer for the legal fight over same-sex marriage that gives credence to opponents’ “slippery slope” arguments, a federal judge has now ruled that the legal reasoning for same-sex marriage means that laws against polygamy are likewise unconstitutional.

Casting both the supercilious mendacity of the Cathedral and the usual arguments against polygamy aside, the chickadee has meticulously demonstrated another reason that the judge's ruling is an imprudent idea--polygamy leads to less genetic diversity since its application leads to fewer men contributing to the next generation without any corresponding increase in the number of women procreating. In this context, reduced genetic diversity means more clannishness, which is where the chickadee comes in. To pithily oversimplify years' worth of work on her part, a takeaway messages has been that inbred societies = bad; outbred societies = good.

Watching the two-season HBO series Rome was an enjoyable experience for this amateur interested in the history of the republic and later empire. The juxtaposition of stoicism and epicureanism in the two historically insignificant protagonists, the skillful crafting of a narrative in a world that is in some ways strikingly similar to our own but in others utterly alien to it, the immensely satisfying casting--combine for one hell of a historically fictional ride.

On that last point regarding the casting, though, a couple of the portrayals bugged me. Octavia, not for aesthetic reasons, but because in the series she's an irresponsible hedonist when the historical consensus seems to be that she pulled off quite the balancing act, managing to remain loyal, faithful, and contemporarily dignified both to her brother Augustus and her husband Mark Antony even after the two most powerful men in the moribund republic were on a seemingly inevitable path to war.

The other is Cato (the Younger), the unflinching Republican who uncompromisingly opposed Julius Caesar, and, in so doing, helped prod Pompey into forcing Caesar to march on Rome. I find affinity for the historical Cato to come easily, but the series tests that by portraying him as a bit of a stammering, quixotic buffoon.

Cato was one of the leaders in the Roman Republic who maneuvered Julius Caesar into a position where his only choices were to either get convicted of a crime by the Senate (thereby losing all power, possibly his life, and with his best outcome a life in exile) or to overthrow the Republic. Caesar's decision was not surprising. His ability to execute on his decision was also not surprising. Caesar was an incredible dynamo, a great leader of men who inspired intense loyalty and devotion in those he led. Cato, by contrast, was a fool. He helped accelerate the death of the Republic.

...

Cato serves as an inspiration for the modern day Libertarians at the Cato Institute. They look up to a guy who overplayed his hand in a Rome where few deeply shared his principles and views. Cato's views found even less support among the native peoples in most of the conquered lands which the Romans ruled. Does this sound familiar?

Why are open borders Libertarians wrong on immigration? For reasons similar to why Cato was wrong about Caesar: a refusal to acknowledge that pursuit of unachievable ideals can result in worse outcomes.

With all the caveats about enormous differences in time and place, one might make the argument that Ron Paul is a sort of Cato of our times. However, it is such incorrigibility that allows inspiration to survive two millenia and a transcontinental journey across the Atlantic.

Like Cicero, posterity might remember David Brooks as more effectual among his contemporaries than Cato then or Paul now, but history's great moderates lack the appeal that history's more committed giants do. What modern think tank takes its namesake from Cicero? What Christian denomination from Erasmus?

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The knockout game phenomenon really, really makes the Establishment uncomfortable. Although it took several years, the seemingly senseless savagery it displayed finally forced the knockout game from being a subject covered almost exclusively by the alternative right to something the mainstream media found increasingly difficult to ignore. Sure, Fox News still does ten minute segments on it without once mentioning race, but at least they're raising awareness. That counts for something!

Four major reasons why the knockout game causes Establishment pontiffs such anxiety:

1) It validates the Derb's non-black version of "The Talk". Be weary around blacks who are unknown to you, especially when they outnumber your group, especially especially if you're a female or a man aged 40+, and especially especially especially if you're alone.

3) Relatedly, the knockout game reveals that one of the left's favorite tropes--that crime is an unfortunate but essentially unavoidable consequence of poverty--is bullshit. Correlation isn't causation, heh. The game's perpetrators aren't acting out of desperation, they're not stealing anything, and they're not enjoying any material gain from their vicious assaults--instead, they're acting out of a mix of boredom (poor people have a lot of free time on their hands), social posturing, racial animosity, and animalistic impulsivity.

4) It is about the most effective argument in favor of gun rights imaginable. The police can't protect potential victims from knockouts and contemporary American communities won't organically protect their fellow citizens, either. Only you can prevent knockouts, and the surest way of preventing them (or second surest--see item #1) is by packing heat.

As a whole, in mathematics the Bay State comes intied with Germany and beats Austria, Australia, Ireland, Slovenia, Denmark, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, France, the UK, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Russia, Lithuania, Sweden, Hungary, Croatia, Greece, and Serbia among the participating members of the Occidental club. It comes in behind Belgium, Poland, Canada, Finland, Estonia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Somewhere in the top third or so of the Euro-descended pack is hardly something to to be ashamed of.

Even Massachusetts, of course, can't match any of the East Asian countries save for descriptively ambiguous Vietnam (though Massachusetts' Asian population outscores all of East Asia except for Shanghai and Singapore--it beats Hong Kong, Taipei, South Korea, Macau, and Japan).

- Being a parochial provincial, I'm unaware of whether or not the female aversion to the STEM fields has yet reached crisis mode outside the US as it has within. Here in the states it's the second biggest problem in education (the intractable Gap forever remaining the ultimate behemoth--why, as Arne Duncan is surely aware, if only we could close the Gap, we'd shoot back into the thick of the European pack. Having closed the national Gap, we'd then be able to move on to the international Gap, snapping it shut and at last putting Liberia on equal footing with Latvia!).

If the issue doesn't have as much visibility outside the US as does within, it's not for a lack of data pointing to the problem. Teenage boys outscored their fellow female students in 51 of the 68 places where testing was administered. In four of the 68, there was no difference in male and female performance. These egalitarian paradises include Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Lithuania, and Montenegro.

Even more equal than that, though, are the countries where the girls outperformed the boys. First, the suggestive female advantages, although the sex differences do not reach the level of statistical significance at a 95% confidence rate--Albania, Russia, Bulgaria, Sweden, Finland, Singapore, Latvia, and the United Arab Emirates. Five of the 68 places are genuinely able to celebrate gender equality by pointing to statistically significant advantages among their female students over their male counterparts. These nations are Iceland, Malaysia, Thailand, Qatar, and Jordan. Looks like the only country more progressive than Qatar when it comes to women's rights is Jordan! Who knew?

Staffan mentioned sour grapes in the context of Denmark's questioning of the validity of the latest PISA results, but the Danes have a lot more to be proud of than the Chinese do. Sure, the latter may be earning higher marks on the scholastic tests, but the when it comes to the results that really matter--those measuring equality--Denmark kicks Shanghai's ass!

- Parenthetically, there is a gender gap that is more overwhelming and consistent than the one in mathematics, but it's not a problem to get worked up about. This gap actually indicates the utmost triumph of Equality--in every single pedagogical jurisdiction, all 68 out of 68 of them--girls outperformed boys in reading, and at statistically significant levels across the board to boot. Once again the two countries with the largest female advantages are Qatar and Jordan!

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Find them on Facebook and Twitter!--as if these two are the Coke and the Pepsi of the social networking world. More like the Coke and the 7UP, actually. Google trends on searches for the terms "facebook" and "twitter", respectively, with "youtube" added in for additional perspective:

Perhaps Twitter is the new Facebook? Twitter is seven years old. In human years, that constitutes youth. The virtual world's aging process has more in common with dog years, though. Twitter isn't novel.

Facebook's IPO was underwhelming (for outside investors, not so much for the company itself). Twitter's was great (for those looking in from the outside; the company left billions on the table). Twitter, however, doesn't have a larger market presence as a consequence. To the contrary, Facebook's market cap is more than four times Twitter's.

Heavily urban, heavily NAM. Twitter is certainly hip. And it's convenient for lazy, cash-strapped media outlets that are able to replace something approaching actual journalism by simply copying a celebrity's half-sentence tweet and passing it off as newsworthy.

What else should be expected from a platform with such space constraints that users might as well be limited to rap's contemporary lexicon, though?

To Twitter's tweeting there is Facebook's essentially identical status updating. To Twitter's re-tweeting there is Facebook's essentially identically sharing. That basically summarizes everything Twitter does. As noted, Facebook does the same (with wider reach), but only in addition to about a bazillion other things to help its far more numerous users navel gaze or whittle time away candy crushing it.

The GSS has data on religious self-identification extending back through the early seventies up to the present. The following graph traces, by year, the percentages of non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and Hispanics who indicated they had no religious affiliation. The mean sample sizes by year are 1112, 126, and 108, respectively:

Understanding there is some noise present in the year-to-year sampling, the white irreligious rate has been higher than the NAM irreligious rate has been over at least the last several decades. While the ratio hasn't changed much over the time period in question, the fact that the irreligious proportion of the population has gone from being fringe at the margins to the sizable minority that it is today probably makes the racial disparity more recognizable now than it was then. In the seventies, someone with no religious affiliation was so rare--and the proselytizing shrillness of New Atheism not yet a thing among them--that most people's pattern recognition software didn't pick up on the racial characteristics of non-believers. Today nearly one-in-five whites professes no affiliation, so if a person knows a handful of white guys, there's a good chance he knows at least one atheist or agnostic. And among an average person's facebook social circle there are tens or hundreds of people without any religious affiliation.

Sunday, December 01, 2013

++Addition++Heartiste quite recently. He points to a different interpretation of the data in a relatively quite obscure location like this one and does so purely as an FYI to his readership. That's an admirable demonstration of what I can't characterize as anything other than consistent intellectual integrity on his part.

The verdict is in: Women want men to cheat on them. Oh sure, they don’t *consciously* want their men to cheat, but unbeknownst to all but the most self aware women, their ginas tingle uncontrollably for men who can — and do — score some poon on the side.

In the vast majority (though likely not all, female sexual variation being what it is) of cases, there's no question that the first part of the assertion--that women tend to be attracted to men who other women are attracted to--is indisputable. Women want you to be capable of cheating. Then again, men want the women they are banging--at least the ones who arouse them more than their own pillows do--to be able to cheat, too, but if they've signed up for the relationship thing, virtually none of them actually want the women to go through with it (if you're not a regular reader here, yes, I'm quite aware that men and women are anatomically, biologically, psychologically, politically, sexually, emotionally, cognitively, etc etc different from one another).

What about the latter part, though? Do they actually want you to dip your pen in another woman's ink? It's difficult to make sense of why, from an evolutionary perspective, females would want their mates to sire offspring with (and presumably provide resources to) other women. The hindbrain isn't going to make distinctions between copulation and procreation when it comes to their men getting with other women, so this is not a straw man argument, it's the logical extension of what Heartiste claims.

The following table shows the percentages of men who were (still) married at the time of their participation in the survey by whether or not they had ever cheated on their spouses and the percentages of men who were divorced or separated when given the survey by whether or not they had ever cheated on their spouses while they were married. For contemporary relevance and racial confounding, all responses are from 2000 onward and only non-Hispanic whites are included, respectively. The relevant questions are posed in such a way that those who have never married are necessarily excluded (N = 3,218):

White men

Still Married

Sep/Divorced

Cheaters

16.0

37.2

Faithful

84.0

62.8

Men from failed marriages are more than twice as likely to have cheated before those marriages officially came apart than are men from marriages that are still in tact.

No, this does not obviously constitute a refutation of Heartiste's assertion. The limitations of a broad based survey like the GSS preclude digging as deeply as would be required for us to take a shot at evaluating that.

For one, we don't have data on who initiated the divorces and separations--how frequently do the men who are cheating leave the marriage because they're ready to trade in the old ride for a new model or simply go back to leasing altogether? How frequently do the women who find out about the cheating break off the marriage as a consequence? We also lack data on if the women who have been cheated on--whether the men who did the cheating are still married or since separated or divorced--were aware of the cheating when it took place, subsequently became aware of it, or remained in the dark up to the point when the responses were given. Finally, we don't know if the married men who have cheated on a spouse were, at the time they partook in the survey, still married to the women they cheated on or if they'd divorced and then remarried someone new (though knowledge on that front would probably just accentuate the relationship between cheating and divorce rather than attenuating or inverting it).